bq. Now, a Harvard University professor has analyzed this tribe’s behavior, using computers to look for trends in members’ writings. And he’s learned something that might help explain why Congress is having such trouble working out a deal this week.
bq. He learned, to his amazement, that modern members of Congress spend about 27 percent of the time just taunting each other.
From David Fahrentold’s “article”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/27percent-of-communication-by-members-of-congress-is-taunting-professor-concludes/2011/04/06/AF1no2qC_story.html in the Washington Post. The Harvard professor is Gary King. “Here”:http://gking.harvard.edu/publications/general-purpose-computer-assisted-clustering-and-conceptualization is some background on the methodology.
In the article, “David Mayhew”:http://www.yale.edu/polisci/people/dmayhew.html comments:
bq. “You’ve got to have an opposition that taunts and a government that taunts back” to highlight their differences on key issues, Mayhew said. “For the public, it’s sort of like watching a tennis match. . . . I think it’s productive in that sense.”
My question is whether we can link taunting to any tangible legislative outcome, such as polarization. Does political rhetoric like taunting matter, over and above the simple fact that the parties in Congress simply disagree about policy?